Search Popularity Stats, Sliced & Diced

Catch up time on search engine popularity stats.
comScore and
NetRatings put
out October 2006 figures this week, plus Hitwise released those earlier this
month. Google's still tops, Yahoo still strong, Microsoft is still dropping and
Ask surpasses AOL's search share, according to comScore. Below, the trend from
all of them over the past year, plus my long-promised compare-and-contrast
charts.

First, let's do a compare-and-contrast table with the basic figures from each
service. These show the estimated share of the number of searches that happened
in the United States in October 2006.

Month

comScore

NetRatings

Hitwise

Google

45.4%

49.6%

60.9%

Yahoo

28.2%

23.9%

22.3%

Microsoft

11.7%

8.8%

10.6%

Ask

5.8%

2.8%

4.3%

AOL

5.4%

6.2%

0.5%

Others

3.5%

8.7%

1.2%

Across the board, all the services put Google in the lead, Yahoo second and
Microsoft's Windows Live third (sorry, I still say MSN on the chart). Two of the
services put Ask over AOL in the fourth place spot. More analysis on all this in
the service trend charts, below.

Here's comScore figures over the past year:

Remember that Google drop back in July, when lots of people started freaking
out about the demise of the Big G. I
warned not to
focus on month-to-month changes. Since then, Google's recovered according to
comScore and keeps going.

Yahoo's seen declines since July, but not enough to send up the alarm bells.
They are well within the usual ranges that I've
discussed are
the things to watch. That range is the 25 to 30 percent slice of the chart.

Unnoticed, as far as I can tell, is the fact that in September, Ask overtook
AOL for the fourth slot in the search engine share battle. That's a big deal. In
fact, according to comScore, AOL is on track to plunge out of the 5 to 10
percent band it has occupied over the past year. Ask is hanging in there.

Of course, the traffic for Ask isn't just for Ask.com. It's for the
combination of sites that Ask owns or controls, including places like
Excite, iWon,
MyWay.com and
My Web Search. Still, as a network,
Ask remains controlling a significant chunk of the search space.

That's what comScore says. Now
let's see how it looks at NetRatings:

Basically, NetRatings shows
status quo. Google and Yahoo keep ticking along at the same levels. So does Ask.
AOL hangs in roughly the same general range. It's Microsoft Windows Live (MSN on
the chart) that catches my eye most with consistent decline.

Also note that with NetRatings,
AOL is well above Ask. That's because NetRatings is only reporting the share for
Ask.com. If other Ask-owned properties were combined, then the Ask figure would
be higher. Much of that traffic instead flows into the "Other" line.

Next to Hitwise:

Hitwise doesn't go back as far as NetRatings and comScore, so it's harder to feel confident about trends. But the
trends are similar to comScore, a slight Google rise, Yahoo holding steady, Ask
above AOL and that decline of MSN.

Now back to what I
promised ages
ago, the old-style comparison charts I used to do. Here are all three services
together, showing share score for October 2006:

Now let me explain what I think
is unique in charting the figures this way. Usually, you'd see a comparison
using a bar chart. Shares for Google from all three services would be shown as
three bars next to each other, then the same for Yahoo and so on.

I like doing these as line
charts, because it makes the gaps more noticeable and gives you a trend as well.

For example, you can see how all
the services rate Google tops, though the amount Google is above the others may
vary. Conclusion? While Google's exact popularity is uncertain, it's clearly
more popular than anyone else, the services agree.

Notice that with Yahoo, they all
agree it is in second place and the general range of popularity is closer
(roughly between 25 to 30 percent). For MSN (Windows Live), the all come
together. When you hit AOL, Hitwise is the big player that's way off the mark
from the other two. I've
covered this
before, that I don't think Hitwise is getting accurate information about AOL
that causes this. But seeing the two big skews -- that Hitwise puts Google so
high above the others and AOL so low -- makes me think that if AOL was counted
correctly, then Hitwise would be reflecting the same general trend as the
others.

Now let's trend each of the major
search engines using figures from all three services. Here's Google:

Fair to say, Google's pretty much
continuing to grow, despite the hiccups you might see from time-to-time on
various services.

Here's Yahoo:

Generally, I think it's fair to
say that Yahoo had a spike in popularity earlier this year but has settled down
more to its usual levels. That's not bad. It has healthy, long-term traffic.
What remains to be seen is if it can grow that traffic more in the long term.

Here's Microsoft:

Slice it how you want, no one is
reporting a pretty picture for Microsoft. Unlike Yahoo, they haven't held share.
It's drop, drop, drop.

Here's AOL, which similar to
Microsoft, shows drops:

I'm sorry I don't have the
similar chart for Ask. I'll try to add it later, but I shut my spreadsheet
(argh) before saving my comparison numbers, so I have some more copy and pasting to do
to get that chart back.

More on Analytics

The Google Analytics Cohort Analysis can be extremely useful in helping SEOs prove the value of new customer acquisition via organic search, show how they engaged with the site, and surface when they ended up converting over time.
0 Comments